All Features
Bud Weightman
The fifth edition of ISO 9001, which is slated for publication in late 2015, has some good ideas regarding improvement and harmonization with other management system standards such as ISO 14001. However, ISO/Draft International Standard (DIS) 9001:2015 has taken away prescriptive language for a…
Annette Franz
You’ve no doubt heard (or can recall) Hans Christian Andersen’s story, “The Ugly Duckling.” If not, here’s a quick refresher: It’s about a baby swan who suffers abuse from his barnyard companions because of how he looks—he’s assumed to be a baby duckling, and an “ugly” one at that—until one day,…
Mark Rosenthal
Once a project is completed, a common question is, “How do we deploy this improvement to other areas in the company?” A fair number of formal improvement structures include the final step of “standardize,” implying that the improvement is laterally copied or deployed into other, similar situations…
Russell Desilets
Companies purchase scales because the value of goods entering or exiting a facility is based on their weight. Without assured scale accuracy, a company can lose thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of dollars annually.
Depending on the requirements and type of weighing device, annual…
Kelly Graves
In my last article, I presented the psychological steps of change and how to overcome the natural human resistance to it. In this installment, I’ll present an example of how to transfer those concepts into plans, the plans into actions, and the actions into continuous behaviors.
This process…
John Keyser
Strong leadership and kindness are not mutually exclusive. In fact, they fit together effectively. The most successful leaders treat their team members with kindness. They realize that kindness is motivating. As Bob Kerrey has said, “Unexpected kindness is the most powerful, least costly, and most…
Patrick Stone
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has a “Plain Jane” version of its Pharmaceuticals FY 2015 Action Plan. In this article, however, let’s look at some interesting wrinkles not necessarily contained in the document.
This “Plain Jane” action plan, taken straight from the document, reads as…
Matthew E. May
I am nothing if not a consumerist. Meaning, I am constantly impressing upon the companies with which I work the importance of a deep and empathic understanding of customers past, present, and future. This is especially true if a company is contemplating a strategic shift that entails repositioning…
Nicola Wilson
With quality the driving force behind innovation and operational improvements in the vast majority of organizations, it’s no surprise that every industry sector has embraced it, from manufacturing to the service. For some sectors, however, quality improvements can be the difference between life…
Jack Dunigan
What is the real value of those who work for your company? For that matter, what is your real value?
As employers and/or potential employers, it’s our responsibility to evaluate those who work for us. It isn’t by chance that the term “evaluate” is used here, because evaluate means to form an idea…
Bruno Scibilia
The Cp and Cpk are well-known capability indices commonly used to ensure that a process spread is as small as possible compared to the tolerance interval (Cp), or that it stays well within specifications (Cpk). Yet another type of capability index exists: the Cpm, which is much less known and used…
John Keyser
When I previously wrote about earning trust with co-workers, a friend, a true leader in the public policy field, called to suggest that a closely related and equally important subject is restoring corporate trust.
I immediately went to sit on my front porch and think about his observation. I…
Quality Transformation With David Schwinn
Let’s begin with yet another example of a lack of understanding of the Perversity Principle, this one from a recent The Times of India report.
“Authorities in India have reportedly arrested some 300 people and expelled 600 students in connection with a massive cheating scandal in the northeastern…
Mike Figliuolo
Erin joined your team about a year ago. She came in with many other candidates for a job opening, and she impressed you during the interview. She was far and away the best candidate.
She has lived up to the high expectations she set in her interviews. She reduced the time it takes to deliver her…
Christine Schaefer
During the recent leadership plenary of the Baldrige Program’s Quest for Excellence Conference, senior leaders of the 2014 Baldrige Award recipients shared their insights and lessons learned.
Scott McIntyre, the U.S. leader of PricewaterhouseCoopers’ (PwC) Public Sector Practice, said, “If we’re…
Mark Troppe
Spring has always been my favorite time of year. The flowers are out again in full bloom, it’s time to plant the garden, and baseball season is here again. Go Nationals!
My absolute favorite thing to do is spring cleaning, which provides the perfect opportunity to address all of the chores punted…
Dianna Booher
Leaders who empower their team members get better results. They make faster decisions, have the ability to act, and create dramatically better experiences for customers. Read on to learn how you can empower your teams.
“Happy families are all alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way…
The Un-Comfort Zone With Robert Wilson
Years ago, while in a traveling sales job that I hated, I stopped at a gas station and used the restroom. Someone, annoyed by the wet floors, had scrawled above the urinal, “We aim to please. You aim too, please.”
It was a classic bit of latrinalia that I’d seen a dozen times before. Written…
Davis Balestracci
Welcome to baseball season! I always do a baseball-themed article around this time, and I found my topic after stumbling on this article recently: How accurate are umpires when calling balls and strikes?
From what I understand, since 2008, home plate umpires have been electronically monitored…
Michael Causey
Informed consent (IC) is more than getting a quick signature from a clinical trial participant, the FDA gently reminds industry in a new guidance addressing increasingly complicated electronic IC (eIC) issues. Issued almost simultaneously with Apple’s new ResearchKit tool, which promises faster,…
Patricia Walsh
We all face adversity in our lives. The difference is in how you approach it. If you’re willing to look past the challenge and have the determination to overcome it, you can achieve more than you ever dreamed was possible.
In 1986 I lost my vision due to a pediatric brain tumor. I lost my vision…
Chip Johns
Reducing waste, implementing efficiency-promoting practices, and continuously improving operations are the main goals of lean manufacturing ideology. These tasks may seem daunting for a manufacturer at the start of an improvement program, but there are many concrete steps that can be taken to…
Michelle LaBrosse
As a project manager, you’re most likely familiar with the five project phases outlined in the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMI, 2013): initiating, planning, executing, monitoring and controlling, and closing. However, do you know the 47 project management “processes” that these five…
Bruce Hamilton
Sometimes we receive unreasonable and confusing directions, and sometimes we give them.
As in the short video clip below, even if the systems behind this confusion are sound and the motivations reasonable, when you put them together they can create a frustrating no-win situation:
Here are a few…
Jim Benson
Business runs on estimates. “How long do you think that might take?” we naively ask. Then when someone tells us how long they think something might take, we write that down and hold them to it.
Merriam-Webster’s says the very word “estimate” means to roughly calculate or judge the value, number,…
